BILLINGS — An eastern migration is balancing the landscape for the third season of varsity high school baseball, marking further growth for the Montana High School Association's venture into the grand old game.
There is still a western-heavy feel for Year 3, especially with Missoula's three public schools hitting the diamond in 2025. But there's a decided eastern shift, as all four Billings high schools as well as Laurel and Huntley Project are now in the mix.
In all, 10 new teams have been added to list of baseball-playing schools. Townsend is the other new squad participating this spring.
"The increase each year, I think it's definitely helped. Especially with our divisions," MHSA associate director and baseball liaison Scott Wilson told MTN Sports. "Getting more teams in what we're considering the East really helped. Adding basically six schools in the Billings area has really built the eastern side of the state."
This year, the divisions are classified as East, Central, South, and North. Following is the alignment structure for 2025, with new teams and/or new co-ops indicated in bold:
East (8)
Billings Central
Billings Senior
Billings Skyview
Billings West
Columbus-Red Lodge-Park City
Huntley Project
Laurel
Sidney-Fairview
Central (8)
Belgrade
Butte
Butte Central
Dillon-Twin Bridges
East Helena
Livingston-Big Timber
Lone Peak
Townsend
South (9)
Corvallis
Florence
Frenchtown
Hamilton-Darby
Missoula Big Sky
Missoula Hellgate
Missoula Sentinel
St. Ignatius-Arlee-Charlo
Stevensville
North (10)
Bigfork
Browning-Heart Butte
Columbia Falls
Eureka
Plains-Hot Springs
Polson
Ronan
Thompson Falls-Noxon
Troy
Whitefish
Wilson said the alignment in the Eastern division this season makes travel more palatable, especially for the likes of Sidney.
"Sidney was definitely an outlier" in the East, Wilson said. "Their travel was extensive. I really give a lot of credit to the schools that were in their conference the past two years for working with them, and also for Sidney to be open to meeting in some neutral locations."
Wilson said the Bozeman and Great Falls school districts have approved baseball and are expected to be ready to play in 2026.
For this season, each team will play 14 conference games, Wilson said, though the schedule is not uniform across the state due to differing participation numbers.
"In our East and our Central conferences, each one of those schools will play all the other schools twice," Wilson said. "And in our South and our North, because they have different numbers, they'll play five of the teams in the conference twice, and then they'll only play those other four teams once.
"So across the board everybody's going to have 14 (conference) games. We felt the 14 conference games was a good number to get a good representation of the top teams."
The state tournament will again feature an eight-team, double-elimination-style bracket, mirroring the basketball model. The four division champions will receive automatic berths to state.
For the second straight year cross-divisional play-in games will decide the other four spots:
The No. 2 seed in the East will host the No. 3 team in the Central; the No. 2 team in the Central will host No. 3 from the East; No. 2 in the North will welcome the No. 3 squad from the South; and the No. 2 team in the South will host the No. 3 from the North.
Florence is the defending champion. Polson won the inaugural title in 2023. This year's state tournament is scheduled for May 22-24 at the Vester Wilson Athletic Complex in Hamilton.
The 2025 season will be played under one classification, but Wilson indicated that the MHSA's goal is to move to a two-classification structure in the future and, eventually, have three classifications to echo the format softball utilizes.
As far as rules, Wilson said there are no significant changes. Pitchers still won't be permitted to throw more than 110 pitches in a game or a day, and still won't be allowed beyond 100 pitches over two consecutive days.
Wilson said pitch counts are limited to 88 or less until the fifth week of the season in mid-April as a way of protecting arms early in the season.
In terms of umpires, Wilson said there is always a need.
"Just like all of our sports we are in a shortage," he said. "Our umpires are doing a great job of working with the schools and being willing to ump multiple games to get all the games in. But as it grows it will continually be a challenge.
"We have a lot of umpires that do baseball and softball, so trying to balance that definitely will be a challenge the more the sport of baseball grows."
